


Rust

by Archangel67



Series: Destiel Week 12 [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2014!verse, Camp Chitaqua, Croatoan, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:35:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archangel67/pseuds/Archangel67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the team fails to stop the Croatoan virus from shipping out of Niveus Pharmaceutics, they have to face a deadly epidemic. Sam questions whether he could have done something more and Dean is left to pick up the pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rust

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Destiel Week 12 / Day 6 / Challenge word: Imbroglio

It had all happened so fast.

Plenty of people were treating the Croats like zombies, but Dean thought of them as insects. Way too many of them, hiding in places you least expected them, and multiplying faster than you could easily get rid of them. When you got infected and you got mean. It didn’t matter who you were before, because once it took you over, you were little more than a rabid dog. He’d seen mothers bashing in the heads of infants, daughters taking down fathers, pastors ripping their congregation limb from limb. It was damn messy.

Any attempt to stop it at the source had been ruined when something went wrong the night they went to Niveus. They had the bombs, the guns, the manpower. But there had been too many demons and Croats surrounding the place and they had barely managed to get out alive, let alone detonate the explosives. Something backfired. Sammy had downed all of that demon blood, for what? Maybe it had been fear that kept Sam from acting. His brother just froze. Cas nearly got his head taken off when Sam apparently _forgot_ how to choke the demons out of the people they were riding. Dean had to make the difficult decision to pull back.

The vaccine had gone out. Hundreds of thousands had been infected.

All they could really do after that was cross their fingers, wait out the worst of it, and clean up the mess. Maybe it was because Crowley had never intended on playing fair in the first place, but he didn’t break the contact he had over Bobby’s soul like he said he would. The only good that came out of the deal was that the old guy could walk again. Dean supposed that was worth something, even if it was idiotic to have given himself a ten year expiration date.

At this point, though, any of them would have been _lucky_ to survive for ten more years. The virus went from a localized problem to a worldwide epidemic. He used to ignore those dumb bastards on the street corners with their “End Is Nigh” signs, but those dumb bastards were getting the last laugh now. The ones who hadn’t already been turned, at least.

It just went from bad to worse. Barricading themselves into Bobby’s house had seemed like a good plan, but they were restless.

“It’s my fault. If I had just been able to do something,” Sam said for what felt like the hundredth time in the past month. It was starting to wear on Dean’s patience.

“Just shut up, Sammy. Okay? Just…” The older Winchester sighed and glared down at the gun he was cleaning, unable to look his brother in the face. “Just let it go. It’s done.”

“I have to take responsibility for this, Dean. It’s all on me. I know it, you know. There’s gotta be some way to go back. Rewind it or – or something. I mean, shit, Cas took us back to the seventies. There’s gotta be something I can do.”

“If I could be of any help at all, I promise you that I would,” Castiel mumbled from where he lay outstretched on the couch, his suit and trench coat exchanged for a loose pair of jeans and a t-shirt he had borrowed from the stash of clothing that Dean kept in the guest room upstairs. He looked smaller in the street clothes. Weaker.

But he was weaker. Whatever he had done back in California, it had zapped the last of his Grace. Cas was as good as human now. He had to sleep, he had to eat, and he could be injured. That much had become clear from the broken wrist he was still nursing from the Niveus incident. Someone was going to teach him how to do all those little things that normal people took for granted. Like how to shave and how to microwave a frozen burrito. Dean supposed that was going to fall on _his_ shoulders for, well, a few reasons. First and foremost because Cas was his friend and he felt responsible for the man.

Secondly, a month into their self-imposed exile, Sam left. Without a word, without warning, without so much as a goodbye Sammy took one of Bobby’s rust bucket junkyard cars and he drove himself to Detroit to give himself to Lucifer. It was Crowley who brought the news.

“Tip top job you did keeping a leash on that idiot brother of yours, Dean,” he had said without any preamble as he appeared in the middle of the living room. The green eyed man had startled, staring up at Crowley. The demon’s voice was tight, his eyes flashing between fear and anger. “Hope you like your hides chargrilled because **Lucifer isn’t fucking around anymore** , boys. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a _very_ dark cave and hope that he’s more interested in using your eyeballs for marbles than he is in reprimanding me. Cheers.”

“Does that mean that Sam…?” Cas had started to ask as he looked to Bobby.

The older man was sitting in his wheel chair near the couch, going through a pile of old books that had been piled up on the coffee table. Trying to find a solution. It was Bobby’s belief that if you just looked hard enough, you could right any wrong. Dean didn’t know if the fallen angel finished his thought or not, because his feet were moving before he was even aware that he had stood. The chair he had been using toppled, clattering against the hardwood floor.

It wasn’t smart and it wasn’t safe but he broke the salt line as he threw the bolts on the front door and walked out, leaving it hanging open. They had been locked in the ramshackle little house for a month. A whole month. He had been starting to go stir crazy and now _this_?

Sammy… That fucking idiot.

As his eyes began to burn, he drew a sharp breath of thick, stagnant summer air while he lost himself in the maze of stacked cars and scrap. It had rained a few nights before and now as the sun shined down, Dean could smell the sharp, earthy tang of the rust that was slowly undoing every last piece of metal in the junk yard. Rust had a heady sort of smell to it, not unlike dried blood. Same color too. Strange coincidences. Dean’s head was spinning and he felt a distinct need to sit down. Cas had followed him, though, and the last person he wanted to look weak in front of was the damn angel who had given up every last bit of what was good inside of him to fight a losing battle.

He heard the blue eyed man take a breath, but before Castiel could make any attempt at comforting the hunter – or potentially reprimanding him for letting all of this happen – Dean shook his head and turned to face him.

“Don’t.” Dean snapped. “Say it. You say a word. One damn word. And I swear to God…”

. . . .

They had left Bobby’s house after that. It had been a difficult choice, but they couldn’t stay holed up forever. Some of the old hunter’s contacts had told him about a place called Camp Chitaqua. A place where other hunters were gathering together. Safety in numbers. It was the best choice they had, so they took it.

Unfortunately supplies were hard to come by. As the number of people at the camp grew, so did the need to go out and find certain things. Canned food. Toothpaste. Toilet paper. Who knew that one day Dean would have gladly gone a day without food if it meant he could get his hands on some real soap instead of the boiled fat-and-lye shit that one of the women in camp had learned how to make. It may have gotten you clean but it always left him feeling like he’d just scrubbed himself down with a slab of pork.

It was a long trip back, but there was one place they knew they would be able to find what they needed. At least the virus struck in a way that didn’t leave the roads jammed with forgotten cars. Most people got hit in their beds. Or at work. Or walking the dog. The highways were actually eerily empty.

So he, Bobby, and Cas piled into the van. Castiel was there mostly for back up, to watch his back. He was the only one that Dean really trusted to be able to do that job. He had tried to insist that Bobby stay behind, but the gruff old hunter had just give Dean a look.

“Probly gonna be the last time I ever get to see the place,” he grumbled. “Let me have that at least, will ya? I’ll try not to let the wheels slow ya down.”

Dean was less prepared to return than he had expected. While Bobby was rolling around, gathering what he could upstairs, the green eyed man had gone down into the panic room, throwing everything he could find into a canvas duffel bag. He stopped short when he saw Sam’s laptop bag, half hidden beneath he creaky old army cot against the wall. He’d started sleeping in the lead lined room before he just up and left. Like it would protect him.

Or protect the rest of them from him.

“Everything alright?”

It was practically like old times, the scruffy fallen angel sneaking up behind him.

Meeting Castiel’s gaze was a challenge. The moment that he did, he looked away again. He couldn’t stand the sympathy there. Cas didn’t realize that he was the last person who should have been feeling pity for anyone but himself. Dean wanted to laugh. He wanted to destroy something He wanted it to just be fucking over already. It was impossible for him to do anything right. For the past few months, since Sammy left, he had been all but ignoring his friend and Cas hadn’t said a damn thing about it, but Dean knew it bothered him.

The other hunters in camp had found the idea of a fallen angel amusing. Most of them had never seen an angel before, period, so having one who was no better off than they were seemed to amuse even the worst of them. They called it just trying to be friends when they got him to start drinking. Smoking. Doing drugs. And who even knew whose bed he was sharing one night to the next any more?

Cas didn’t fucking know any better. He couldn’t see that he was dealing with people who didn’t want to be his friends. They wanted to tear him down. Because what was more poetic than some poor sap of an angel giving into every temptation under the sun as they all sat back and watched the world burn?

Dean knew he should have done something, but he ruined everything he touched.

“Sam’s dead, Cas.” He said it like it was a new revelation. But his brother had been gone for nearly half a year now. Dean refused to admit that Sammy was alive somewhere, being worn like a cheap suit by the Lucifer. No. There was no more Sam.

“You know that’s not -” Castiel started.

His voice betrayed him, he was shouting now, the angry bite of it filling the lead lined bunker. “He’s dead and gone! You hear me?”

“But Dean...” The burnt out angel looked worried. Genuine concern in his voice. “We still have a chance. We already have three of the rings. Death is the only one we need.”

“It’s not that easy, Cas.” Exasperation. Pain. Refusal. “We can’t just…”

There was a sudden, loud crash that came from upstairs. Dean swore under his breath and both men ran, scrambling toward the stairs. There were low, impatient voices – but Cas wasn’t well trained enough to notice the details. He had beaten Dean up to the first floor and he was the first one to encounter the intruders.

Croats.

Wait. No. They had guns. _Not_ Croats.

Scavengers. Those assholes who took advantage of other people’s planning. They took to killing survivors and pillaging supplies instead of stocking up their own. They must have seen the salvage yard and figured they had hit a treasure trove. They had just need in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wouldn’t have been a problem but Bobby was in the living room and practically helpless. He didn’t even have a gun on him.

It all happened so fast.

“Stop!” Dean heard Cas shout as he rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and burst into the living room, fumbling to reach the pistol that was haphazardly stashed the back of his jeans. But the cry was followed by a trio of gunshots, a muffled groan, and a thud. Dean’s heart leapt into his throat, blood rushing in his ears. No… He had already lost his brother. He couldn’t lose Cas too.

…But it wasn’t Cas.

The thud had been. The man was knocked out cold, crumpled on the ground with a wide gash on his forehead from where he had taken the butt of one of the scavenger’s guns to the face. When Castiel had suddenly appeared from downstairs, it must have made the second man nervous enough to just start shooting instead of bothering to keep Bobby around long enough to ask where the good stuff was. Three rounds had torn through the graying hunter’s chest and left him slumped forward in his wheelchair as blood quickly darkened his plaid shirt.

No last words. No tearful good bye.

Bobby was dead.

. . . .

Dean couldn’t remember how he had done it. One moment he was looking at the man who had been more of a father to him than John had ever been, and the next he wasn’t connected to himself any longer. When he came to, he was sitting on the front steps of the house, aching all over like he had over exerted himself, blood on his hands and the scavenger’s gun lying beside him. Whatever he had done, it must have worked. He would have been dead otherwise.

Not that he felt _alive_ right now. He felt disconnected.

“Shit… Dean. What did you do?”

Cas had stumbled out of the doorway, clutching a dish towel to his bleeding forehead. Looking back toward the house, toward where the hunter knew Bobby was quickly going cold, Dean scowled and stood. Maybe it was his fault that he had started to ignore Cas and hadn’t given him the proper training. He shouldn’t have let him slack off so much. Castiel didn’t have time for booze and pills when he hardly knew the right way to point a damn gun. If he had just thought to stop and figure out a way to take out the scavengers before bulldozing into the room…

Bobby would still be alive.

Letting out a soft, bemused breath the hunter reached out as if to put his hand on Castiel’s shoulder. Instead, rough fingers grasped the other man’s shirt collar, dragging him off balance. As he stared Cas, he could see himself reflected in the angel’s eyes – a creature constructed of pure rage. The bastard didn’t even have the good sense to flinch.

Dean couldn’t take it. Someone looking at him like he still knew what the fuck he was doing. Everything was instinct and look where it had landed them. Sam gone. Bobby dead. The whole goddamn world falling apart. Shoving Cas roughly against the old, faded siding of the house Dean’s words were almost inaudible.

“This is your fault. All of it. You and all those other winged assholes. I thought you were different, Cas. I thought you fucking cared. When we get back to camp, just stay the hell away from me. You hear me? I’m done with this. I don’t need some angel on my shoulder who can’t even keep his _friends_ alive.”

For his part, Castiel was stunned into silence, not fighting the uncomfortable way that Dean had rammed him into the wall. All he could manage was to look surprised. _Hurt_. Cas dropped his eyes, pursing his lips and nodding shortly.

“Yeah. I hear you.”

Something had broken in Dean that day.

He just didn’t care anymore.


End file.
